By Megan Large, CF APMP
What is a win theme? A win theme is simply the reason why your company should be awarded the contract. It is something that should be clearly stated in your executive summary and throughout your proposal. While a win theme should highlight your strength and unique differentiator, it should provide your client with a solution.
Many times we consider strengths as something that are unique to us. However, a strength is really just an attribute or a feature. A differentiator is a feature that differs from your competitor’s offer. Your company’s experience could be a feature and is considered important to the client. But what about your experience makes your company stand out? What can you say that your competitors cannot?
You should evaluate your win themes throughout the entire proposal process. Once the RFP is live, you can validate your win theme… but ideally win theme development should happen at the time you decide to bid and throughout the capture phase. Many times the decision to bid doesn’t happen until the RFP is released but developing your win theme is a part of the capture phase is something I highly encourage you to stress to your sales teams. If you wait until the RFP is released, have you really given yourself time to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses before electing to submit? You should be asking:
- Do you know what is keeping your client up at night?
- Have you asked the right questions to understand their needs?
- How can you provide a solution if you don’t understand the issues?
Knowing the key issues is the first step to developing your win theme and to providing your solution.
In addition to understanding your client’s needs, you should take the time to consider what your competitors have to offer. One part of capture planning and identifying your win strategy is performing a competitive analysis. In this analysis, there are four factors to consider: strengths, weaknesses, strategy (either your strategy or your competitor’s strategy) and response ( your response to their strategy or their response to yours). It’s important to understand both strengths and potential weaknesses. Everyone has a weakness. Recognizing your own weakness and establishing a plan to overcome it is important. Your competitors are going to be playing off your weaknesses just as you would of theirs.
It’s a theme… not just a statement. It should be woven throughout the entire proposal response. Introduce your win theme statement in your executive summary or your cover letter. Incorporate it in every section of your response. You can even modify your win theme statement to specifically address individual sections.
In conclusion, 1) develop your win theme early, 2) evaluate it early and often, 3) perform the appropriate analysis to validate and 4) incorporate it throughout your entire proposal response.
Megan Large, CF APMP
Pursuit Strategy Manager, Aviation
As Pursuit Strategy Manager at Burns & McDonnell, Megan is responsible for coordinating business development outreach with key accounts, government affairs outreach and overseeing opportunities and help develop a strategy to win them. Specific activities include client relationship planning, quality review of aviation related proposals, event management, public relations and coordination with our industry associations. She also serves as APMP GMC’s Events Chair in 2024.
